Become Better Than 99% of Other Wedding Pros

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Want to excel beyond 99% of other wedding pros? In this episode, I share five essential strategies to help you adapt to economic challenges, make data-driven decisions, and build a profitable business you love. Listen now for actionable tips that will help you overcome common industry hurdles and thrive. 

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https://brandeegaar.com/Be-Better-Than-99-Percent

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Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Wedding Pro CEO Podcast. If you find these strategies helpful, make sure to share this episode with your fellow wedding pros. And remember, in the world of weddings, it's all about building genuine relationships and showcasing your best work. Until next time, keep shining, CEOs!

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Transcript

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Hey there, CEO. It's Brandee here and I wanted to let you know that we are hitting pause on new episodes for the month of July so that our team can rest, reset and gear up for all the new strategies that we are bringing you for the back half of 2025. But do not worry because we are not leaving you hanging all month long. We're bringing back some of our most downloaded, most popular episodes, the ones that you drop into our dms and have the most questions about. In this episode, we are bringing back episode 251 where we talk about how to be better than 99% of wedding pros. I share five strategies in this episode. Simple strategies to help you be part of the 1% in your market that is leading the industry in your area. And honestly, these are not difficult strategies. They're not things that are gonna take you years or months to execute. They're simple things that you need to be reminded about, about how you can beat 99% of the other people in your market just from doing these. Simple five strategies. So if you've never listened to this episode or if it's a refresher, I want you to tune in and make sure that you get just even one golden nugget from it that you can implement in your business right away to really help you to be part of that 1%. Now behind the scenes, our team is working on a few things, I wanna bring them to your attention before we get into this episode number one, We have officially announced that the wedding Pro CEO Summit 2026, will be in Orlando, Florida. I am bringing it back home into my market, my backyard, and I cannot wait to welcome so many CEOs here to Sunny Orlando. June 1st through fourth, 2026. It's year five, we are pulling out all the stops. So our team is feverishly working behind the scenes Tickets will open to the wait list first. So if you're not currently on the wait list, I want you to head over to wedding pro ceo.com slash summit join the wait list because they will get tickets first. And once the tickets sell out, they are gone. this is a boutique event, designed to help us really dig into your business over three days, we wanna make sure that we can keep it that way so we will be capping tickets Make sure you are on the wait list, wedding pro ceo.com/summit for Wedding Pro CEO Summit 2026. The second thing that we are working on behind the scenes here in July while we are taking this rest and reset break is we are doing a daily email that we're calling the Shift. This is an email that is delivered to your inbox every single weekday morning. It's one high level shift designed to grow your profit and buy back your time, and Emails take less than 60 seconds to read. We are having an absolute blast writing them and getting these strategies into your inbox, we have been getting the most fun response when people reply. We absolutely love getting your replies, so please be sure to do so. If you love an email, if something resonated with you, if you have a question, please hit reply and let us know if you're not. Already getting the shift. What are you waiting for? Jump over to wedding pro ceo.com/the shift make sure that you're signed up. This is a test that we're doing for the month of July to see how it goes, to see if you guys like getting a daily email. if this is something that's actually moving the needle in your business, if it's something we will keep up, if it's something that's not really working, you don't love the daily emails. We'll look at changing it up after July. So this is a fun test. We always love to test things in our own business so that we can bring you the best strategies to grow and scale your wedding business. CEOs? If you're a first time listener, welcome and if you're a long time listener, welcome back. I am so excited for you to dig into this episode about how to be better than 99% of Wedding Pros, this replay episode, let's dig in. The reason that so many small business owners fail to thrive is because so few people are willing to do what it takes to become excellent in scaling your business. Hey there, CEOs. You're listening to the Wedding Pro CEO podcast, and I'm your host, Brandee Gaar. This is the podcast that will help you grow and scale your profitable wedding business, and I cannot wait to dig into today's episode with you where we are gonna talk about the. Five strategies that will help you become better than 99% of all other wedding pros. You ready to dig in with me? Let's go. Okay, so the first thing that we wanna talk about is how simple it really is to stand out from the crowd. And the reason for this is because there are so few people who will actually do the work to stand out. They say they're gonna do the work. They want to have a profitable business. They want to have a business that grows. But when push comes to shove, they're not willing to actually do the work and put in the time to do what it takes to become part of that 1% that is flourishing in this industry right now. So I'm gonna talk about the. Five strategies that I worked through with my students. And listen, I'm a tough love coach. I love to be your biggest cheerleader. As you can probably hear in most of the episodes here on the podcast, I'm your biggest cheerleader, but I'm also the one who's gonna kick you in the booty a little bit and tell you to stop making excuses. Stop letting the outside. Forces control whether you are going to succeed or not in your business. And so these are the things that I work through with my students inside all of our programs. I wanna help you to excel at your business and to do that. Sometimes that comes with a little bit of tough love. So forgive me if this episode has a little bit more of that tough love side of me as your business coach than I typically have in our episodes. But I think that it's so important because I don't want to be the one who's just always. Out here saying, yeah, go. You're killing it. You're killing it. I want to also be able to say, Hey. Time to have a gut check moment. It's time to step it up in your business. Okay, so the first one that I wanna talk about is that I want to acknowledge that this economy stinks. That's our first strategy that we're talking about. Okay? Brandee, how does acknowledging that the economy stinks actually become a strategy to help me scale? And the reason I wanted to start with this one is because I've actually been. Kind of making a really big stink about this online. A lot of my social media has been surrounding the fact that so many wedding pros are blaming the economy on the reason that their business isn't thriving right now. And I am of the mindset that we need to acknowledge what is going on in our economy. I'm gonna break that down a little bit for us, but then we need to adapt. To that, right? So we don't wanna just deny that the economy isn't a challenge, it's, it is a challenge. But there's not been a single year that I've been in business since 2007 where I haven't had to adapt my business to the economy. Whether the economy's booming or it's an election year. We're in a recession. There's so many things that happen that's an outside force that you're never gonna be able to control. So as a business owner, acknowledging that the economy plays a massive role in your business and then adapting how you're gonna market and sell to that economy is part of this strategy to make you better than the 99%. I have to tell you guys, if you go on threads, I promise you, you can find 10 different posts from different wedding pros who are on there complaining. Or you know, saying, I don't know what I'm gonna do about my business because the economy sucks. Or is anybody else seeing a 40% decrease in their weddings across the board? And I'm always the one that's over there like. No, my students are not seeing that, and I'm not seeing that either. And the reason for that is because we aren't sitting on our hands. My students are not sitting on their hands and saying, well, I guess we'll hope that 2025 is a better year. You don't hope that your business is gonna get stronger. You have to do something about it. So in this economy right now. Everything has an inflated price, right? But that's not just the wedding industry. That is literally globally across the board. Every industry is being affected by this. And so all businesses, all business owners have to put on their business owner hat and they have to learn to adapt. So how are we adapting to that, right? So we've got higher costs, we've got inflation, we've got lower discretionary income, right? So not as many people are eating out. Not as many people are going on vacations. Not as many people are traveling. People might be having smaller weddings. Right, but they're still getting married. Our engagement numbers aren't down for the year, so people are still getting engaged. They may be focused on how they can save money during their wedding, so again, we're gonna adapt to that as well. And then we also have Gen Z coming into the marketplace. This is huge because we've talked about millennials being our generation that we're selling to for a decade now. And now finally we have this new generation coming in and they buy so differently they. Think so differently, and there's so many traditions that they're just throwing out the window completely, which is actually playing into our favor because a lot of the things that they're throwing out the window are the over the top weddings. They're throwing out some of the more opulent, like ridiculous things. They're throwing out tradition, like having bridal parties. This I. I, I'm in love with this trend, right? Like not having a bridal party is like a wedding pro's dream. There's so much less drama, so many less people to coordinate. But that also means that they're spending less, they don't have to have bouquets for all those people, ERs for all those people. They don't have to worry about travel and all the things that go along with having this large bridal party, right? So they're already. Scaling back some just by simply doing things differently. And so how are we adapting to the economy that's in front of us? Right? That is such a big deal. So strategy number one is to acknowledge that the economy plays a role in our businesses, but to understand that it's our job as business owners to adapt to it, not to just sit back and let it happen to us. Okay. Number two is that. All wedding pros who are winning the 1% of wedding pros who are thriving and scaling that are the best. And if you're listening to this and you're like, yes, Brandee, tell me how to be part of the 1%. Tell me how to be the best of the best in my market, then I want you to listen to this one. Number two is to make all decisions based on facts and not fear. And I wanted to follow this one with the whole economy. Speak right away because, so. Many of us are fearful right now of what's gonna happen, what's happening in the wedding industry? Are we being affected by a downturn in the market, right? And so fear is really setting in, and as you start to become more fearful in your business, it actually holds you back from doing the things that you need to do to grow your business. So for instance, when I'm over on Threads interacting, and if you guys can't tell, I'm obsessed with threads because I think it is like the best. Place to be engaging right now, but when I'm over on Threads interacting and I see wedding pros that are saying, you know, my sales are down 40%, or I haven't booked a wedding in three months, the question I always ask is, how's your marketing strategy? What are you doing to bring more leads into your funnel? And 100% of the time, 100% of the time, the answer I get back is, it could be better, or it's non-existent, or I don't get leads from social media, so I just don't bother. And I'm like. Then what do you expect to happen? Like what do you expect to happen? And so when that fear sets in, we start to make decisions based on that fear. So we start to think, well, nobody is doing very much business right now, right? Like nobody is winning in this economy right now. So you just kinda like. Sit back and don't do anything, and I'm like, no, this is literally the opposite of what you should be doing. So how can you make those decisions based on fact? Well, the first thing I want you to do is I want you to go through all of the leads that you've gotten so far this year, right? So we're about seven months into the year as of the time of this recording, and you should have a really good idea of how many leads that you've taken in. So I want you to go back through, if you don't, don't already have this data, I want you to go back through. Every single lead that you've gotten for this year, and I want you to see how many leads that you get every single month. Then I want you to look, and I want you to see how many of those leads are going to consultation, right? And then of those consultations, how many are you booking? This is so, so important because this is really gonna help us to drive that data. Is it that we need more leads? Or is it that we need to be better at our conversion? Maybe you're getting 10 leads a month, but you're only converting zero or one. That's not a great conversion rate. We need to then work on how you're selling and how you're converting, right? So we really need to focus on your sales funnel, but maybe you're only getting one or two leads per month, which isn't nearly enough to book your quota, and so you're like, no, I do need to get more leads. And that's when we wanna. Focus on that marketing, and from there we wanna focus on, okay, what? What is it that brings leads into our business? Do we need to have better relationships in our local marketplace? Do we need to go start networking with vendors or venues in our marketplace? Do we need to get on social media, which. I think that's a yes every single day. Do we need to get on social media and start posting more? How are we doing on engaging? Are we going onto other vendors posts and engaging the people that we wanna work with? I just recently had a bride, a 2025 bride comment on one of my tiktoks and say that she found. 80% of her vendors because she found them interacting on her venue's Instagram page. So she would just watch and see who interacted over on that page, and that's how she found 80% of her vendors. And I was like, yes, this is what I'm talking about. Right? So if your sales are down right now, I really want you to take it back to the data. I want you to look at it and I want you to say, where do I need to focus my efforts every single day so that I can make sure. That I am driving leads into my business. And if I'm already driving a decent amount of leads into my business, am I converting those or do I need to really focus on how to do a better conversion? How to do better follow up? What's falling off in the middle? Right? And this is what I work with all of my students on inside of our programs, is really looking at the data because the data tells us. All the answers. It doesn't lie. It's non-emotional. So in such an emotional industry and in just an emotional time with the economy being so crazy and so much going on in the world, we really need to take it back to the facts, and we need to make all of the decisions in our business based on that data, and that is gonna help you stand out from the crowd because instead of driving your business through fear. You're gonna be driving your business through facts, which I promise you will help you to win every single time. Number three, we're on strategy number three to help you be better than 99% of all the other wedding pros in our industry. And this one, y'all, I want you to tune in closely, okay? Because this one is so simple, but I see so few wedding pros actually doing it. And this is to surround yourself. With other business owners who believe what you want to achieve is possible and who are already doing it. And this sounds so silly. You're like, Brandee, duh. Right? But I want you to really look at your circle one. Do you have a circle? Right? Because I know that there's so many wedding pros who are like, I'm lonely in this industry. Like if. Feels lonely. Um, there's, you know, community over competition, but not actually in my market. I know there's a lot of markets that are like that. I, I'm very fortunate to have a market that is very community driven, but there are markets where you're kind of lonely, right? And so you're just out there by yourself. I would encourage you to get into a group of wedding pros, business owners who are already doing what you want to be able to do. Okay. Because they're gonna show you that it's possible. So instead of every day being surrounded with other wedding pros who are like, yeah, the economy sucks. Yeah, we're never gonna get any leads this month. And you guys, trust me, there are wedding pros that are saying this every single day on Threads and Instagram. I, I personally don't want to be surrounded by business owners who are telling me that, that are believing that it's not possible. Because what I'm seeing with my own business and with. All of my students and the people that I'm interacting with is that they are having their best year that they've ever had. And the reason for that is because, one, they have the strategies and the tools to do it. Two, because they're surrounded by people who are already doing. At or better than the level they wanna do. And so it's driving them. They're like, I see that it's possible and I wanna do it. That's why when people come into my program, I love that we have so many testimonials every single month. I have all of our pros say what their wins are from that month so that newer pros who are coming into the program can see like, oh my gosh, like how are you having your best month ever in July of 2024, like record breaking months. And so I want people to be able to see that. So what I would tell you, CEO listening to this is make sure that you are surrounding yourself with people who are showing you the possibilities instead of the people who are dragging you down and telling you the doom and gloom. Because there's both to be had, and me personally, I can tell you right now, I want somebody who throws the carrot just a little bit. Further so I can run to chase it. Like I constantly pushing myself by someone else being a couple steps in front of me. I want to beat them, I want to get to them, right? And so that's so, so important and the psychology of all of this. How do you get better than 99% of other wedding pros shutting out the 99% who are telling you it's not possible and joining the 1% her telling you, let's go right. Number four is to be relentless. And you guys, I'm not telling you work from sunup to sundown. That is not what I want you to hear in this number four strategy, okay? I'm not telling you like get on social media 600 hours a day and, and just be out there all the time, like work yourself to death, hustle yourself to death. I'm not telling you that, okay? That is not what I want you to hear, but what I do want you to hear is that it takes work. To be better than everyone else in the industry. And what that looks like for me, I'll give you an example for myself, is that

I get up at 6: 18:40

00 AM I, there's lots of people who get up way earlier than that, but for me, that feels really good. Like I can get enough sleep and the sun is up and I'm not like, oh, dragging myself out of bed, right?

So I get up at 6: 18:52

00 AM do my shower, do some reading, and then I have a list of tasks that has to be done. To market my business before my day ever starts. So my day with clients, client, work, staff, all that kinda stuff,

typically starts around 10: 19:09

00 AM And so by the time I take a shower and all that kinda stuff, get ready. I have about two and a half to three hours to focus on the things that move the needle in my business Now. I could easily get up later. I could easily start client work first thing in the morning, but I know that as a business owner, if I am not laser focused, my best hours focused on sales and marketing of my business, that that always gets left to the end. And this CEO is how we end up working at 2:00 AM. On timelines or answering leads at two o'clock in the morning, it gets pushed off, right? It gets pushed off and it gets pushed off. And then all of a sudden when I ask you, Hey, how are leads going? How are um, sales going? And you're like, well, I haven't done follow ups with my sales funnel in 10 days. And I'm like. What, why? Because I'm so busy with client work. I haven't posted on Instagram in in a week because I'm so busy with client work. That's an unacceptable answer for the 1%. The 1% understands that the first priority in your business is sales and marketing. There's nothing in your business that should take a higher priority than sales and marketing your business. So every single day before my day starts, so before client work seeps in, before staff starts messaging me, before even students start messaging me. For the my coaching brand, I am focused on creating reels. I'm focused on posting to my stories, to engaging with other accounts on TikTok, Instagram, and threads. I am making sure that I'm posting to TikTok and I'm checking my sales funnel. All of those things happen before a single stitch of client work gets done, or a single slack gets answered in the morning from my staff or from my students, and that's because to be able to be part of the 1% I know it is my role and responsibility. To focus on sales and marketing, and that's what I want you to know about this strategy. Number four, when I say be relentless, it doesn't mean work 24 hours a day. It means work very smart and put your best hours of every single day into the things that are gonna move your needle forward. I also hear a lot of wedding pros who will say something like, I don't have time to post every day on Instagram. I don't have time to post on TikTok every day. I don't have time to engage on threads every single day. And. My answer to that is then stop complaining that you don't have enough leads. Because if you wanted to, you would. That's the beginning and the end of it. If you wanted to, you would. We make time for things that are a priority in our business. So you can say that scaling your business is a priority, but at the end of the day, you have to put your money where your mouth is. You have to be willing. To make the time in your day, to find the time in your day to make a priority of sales and marketing your business. And when you do that, I promise you, I promise you the payoff will be tenfold, but you have to be relentless in the pursuit of scaling your business. Number five, and this is our last strategy, and it really goes along with number four. And that's just simply to stop making excuses. Y'all listen, this is where the really tough love is coming in, and this is where sometimes it can be difficult when I'm working with a student who maybe isn't having the best year or isn't having the best month when they come into the program and you know. I walk a really fine line and I wanna make sure that you understand my heart behind everything that I'm saying in this episode, but especially number five. And it's not to kick you while you're down. It's not to say you suck at what you're doing, but it is to say in the amount of time it takes you to go on social media. And complain that you don't have enough leads. You could be doing something about those leads in the amount of time it takes you to figure out how bad the economy is or how it's affecting the wedding industry as a whole. You could be researching ideas of how you could stand out from the crowd. You could be editing your profile. You could be engaging on other posts. You could be setting up a coffee date with a venue. You could be to. Pouring a venue, you could be setting up a time to meet with a photographer in your area. There are a million things that you can do with your time, and there are so many things within your control. Too often what we decide to do is to blame. All the outside forces and to just sit on our hands and to make an excuse. Instead, y'all, if I hear one more wedding pro, say, well, I'm just gonna chalk this year up to a bad year, or that it's an election year. Here's the thing, every four years we have an election in our country, and so far, the last three elections have been a total crap show. So I don't see it getting any better every four years. We're gonna have a year like we have right now where the country is in unrest. We've got crazy candidates. There's so much back and forth, right? That's an outside force you're never gonna be able to control. Stop making excuses and instead adapt to it. What can you do differently? What can you do better? Who can you surround yourself with to make sure that you're being pushed to be the best that you've ever been? Because I promise you, in 17 years of doing business, I've been through the great recession, I've been through COVID, I've been through really great up years, and I promise you there are pros and cons to. Every single one in 2022 when we had couples knocking down our doors, none of us could keep enough team members staffed, right? Like that was the problem then is we couldn't get back to people fast enough. We couldn't write contracts fast enough, we couldn't get enough team members staffed. Now we're complaining because the economy's the opposite direction. There's never gonna be a time where you've got a perfect scenario. So you as the business owner, need to stop making excuses and figure out how you're gonna adapt to it every single year. Okay, you guys, I hope that you loved this episode and if this episode was a little bit triggering to you, if it was a little bit of a gut punch moment and you were like. Yeah, I, I think I am doing that, but I don't want to do that anymore. You guys, that's exactly what this episode is for. It is never, ever to shame you. I never want you to leave one of my episodes and feel shame. I want you to feel that gut punch to say, I wanna be better. I know that I can be like the best in my marketplace, and that's what I want from you. I wanna push you to be the absolute best that you are. I would love. For you to DM me and chat a little bit more about how I can help you take your business to the next level. Engagement season is coming so fast you guys. It'll be here before you know it. And we're working with all of our pros inside of our programs to really make sure that all of your marketing, all of your sales, all of your packages have been checked for profitability. Because when we go into this November and we go into this engagement season, we are going into battle. And I want all of the wedding pros that I'm working with to be ready. So if you're interested in learning more. About the accelerator, about our inner circle, about how I help Wedding Pros two and three times their revenue in less than a year. Then I would love to chat with you, so come over to my dms. I'm at Brandee, Gaar over on Instagram. Drop me a DM and let's chat about whether our programs are the right fit for you. CEO. Thank you so much for being here every single week. I appreciate it and I will see you next time.